FAQ's On Heating and Air Conditioning Systems
Informing Our Fredericksburg & Stafford, Virginia Neighbors

Fredericksburg Heating & Cooling provides a wide variety of air cleaners, humidifiers, thermostats and u/v lights for your indoor air quality. Before placing a service call, we suggest you check your breakers, air filters and thermostat.

How It Works:
How an Air Conditioning System works: It removes the heat out of your house thru the refrigerant. The refrigerant is pumped by the compressor thru the condenser/outdoor coil where the outdoor fan pulls air thru the coils and removes the latent heat out of the refrigerant and condenses into a high pressure sub-cooled liquid which is fed to the metering device such as a thermal expansion valve or piston actuator where the refrigerant changes state to a saturated low pressure gas and is fed into the evaporator/indoor coil where the indoor blower blows air across the coil and picks up the heat out of your house causing the refrigerant to become a superheated vapor. The refrigerant now returns back to the compressor to start the cycle over again.

How a Heat Pump works:
It works the same way the air conditioner does but it has a reversing valve in the outdoor unit where it reveres the cycle of refrigerant flow to pick up the heat outside your house and put it into your house. This is why when it is very cold outside the Heat Pump has a hard time heating your house. All Heat Pumps have back up electric heat to help heat your house during extreme cold weather or when the Heat Pump goes into defrost cycle. The defrost cycle on a Heat Pump is needed to defrost the outdoor coil when ice develops on it and is not able to pick up heat very well. It does this by reversing the refrigerant flow into the A/C mode via the reversing valve and stopping the outside fan from running until the coil is defrosted. This is all controlled by the defrost control board. Once the coil is ok the defrost board then switches the reversing valve back to the Heat Pump flow.

How Gas Furnace works:
It uses natural gas, propane, or fuel oil to heat your house. The furnace has a sealed heat exchanger where the gas is burned to heat the heat exchanger and the indoor blower blows air across the heat exchanger thus picking up the heat and adding it into your home. The efficiency is rated between 80% to 96% on all new furnaces. This means if you spend $100.00 heating your house on a 80% furnace 20% is lost out the flue so $20.00 is not used to heat your home.